The Unlikely Daughter
by Raven Aorla
Summary: Death spends her day 500 years from now mortal trying alcohol for the first time. Which leads to trying something ELSE for the first time. The big question is, do the Endless or the crew of Serenity make an odder family?
1. Chapter 1

Crazy things pop into your head sometimes. Not my characters.

WARNING: I have a talent for spawning entertaining crossovers that start off strong but take ages to update thereafter. I'm not saying this will happen, but it's likely.

* * *

Nine months after the Miranda affair, the crew of _Serenity _was still painstakingly building up their contact list after the loss of so many friends. They still had enough work to keep them flying, but they had precious little opportunity to find shelter anywhere to fix up the ship and lay low after a heist.

Mal never expected that Canton would be one of those places, but according to Inara's sworn testimony after she'd been waved, Boss Higgin's son and heir was as gaga over Jayne as the Mudders and would absolutely love to host them for a few weeks. Apparently in the time since the Magistrate died from a stroke, young Fess had increased the Mudder's wages, built a school with a decent teacher, and built a hospital with a real doctor and four good nurses.

The last was a matter of import, as unbeknownst to all when they had lost Wash, Zoe was with child. Mal had been in the mildly disturbing position of using River to supply both a fair amount of Wash's piloting _and _pretty much all of Zoe's fighting capacity – though Zoe was and would always be second-in-command no mater what state she was in. Simon had proven himself decent at baby delivering, but having already suffered so much loss in their ragtag family the prospect of a hospital with modern equipment was a reassurance.

Fess Higgins had given them a warm welcome, treated them to fine dining and generous lodgings, but Mal found himself in the tavern late into the night. Perhaps it was hearing Jayne's praises sung over and over (though Jayne himself had become much humbler in his accepting of their adoration), or, more like, it was the fact that Inara was servicing their host over the next several days. Though he realized how hypocritical this was it seemed so much worse when he somewhat _knew _the client, as a decent man no less.

He was alone as well. Jayne had his pick of the local gals. Zoe was stocking up on sleep (Lord knew she'd need it after the big day), and in any case she'd have little to do at a bar. Simon and Kaylee were…well, they had no interest in drinking. And River had gained access to the mansion library and was devouring books, possibly all night.

It was after the third Scotch – and he did appreciate the wider variety of drinks on tap this time 'round – that the cheerfully tipsy young woman sat beside him. "Ni hao!"

Mal was taken aback. She was a pretty girl, probably around twenty, with the blackest hair he'd seen and the strange accessory of charcoal smudges, making a curl around the bottom of one eye and blackening the eyelids. She also had a cross with a circle-top hung 'round her neck. "Hi…"

She had a beer in her hand. "I've never gotten drunk or done anything of the kind before, and I thought I should. To really get it. It's such an important thing for so many people, you know? Is it common to find yourself attracted to people more than usual?"

"Yes, that would be a fairly ordinary symptom."

"Call me Didi, if you like. And you look lonely."

Mal didn't remember much about what followed, except some vague crazy-talk to rival River's about how she was only mortal for today so she could understand the "bitter tang", and their ending up in his room, and that it turned out she was a virgin but found his embarrassment at the discovery amusing.

She was gone when he woke with a headache, and he thought all things considered it wasn't his finest hour but at least she acted like she had a good time.

Zoe's baby arrived a few days later and turned out to have cerebral palsy, condition that thankfully wouldn't kill him or prevent him from becoming a happy adult one day, but would require special care that the Firefly crew couldn't possibly give. After some thought and perhaps a private tear or two, Zoe decided to stay with _Serenity _and pay the childless schoolteacher and her husband a portion of her wages to care for him. The crew would visit when they could.

* * *

They were at dinner, back in the black, two weeks later when a most startling thing came about. "Pass the salt, please, Kaylee," Simon said.

River got that look of hers, like the world had been peeled open. "She's here."

"Hm?" Inara asked. She'd been eating with the crew more often lately.

"Sorry to drop in like this, but you folks move around a lot and I knew this would affect the whole group," the cool and amiable voice said from the bridge. Mal dropped his chopsticks when the woman entered the dining room. It was Didi, only much, much paler, and dressed all in black in slim pants and a fitted shirt, with big combat boots, and black lips and black eyeshadow and a much more delicate black curl under one eye. And her necklace was much shinier somehow.

"Mal…did you marry another girl by accident?" Zoe asked calmly.

"We're not married," the woman said with a smile.

"How…how…what…" Simon always was a champion for incoherency.

Jayne had stealthily (or so he thought) put a napkin over his lap.

"HOW ARE YOU HERE?" Mal cried.

River rose to her feet and gave the woman a deep bow. "The lady honors us. But please, not yet."

"Don't worry, dear, I'm not here to take anybody. I'm here with some news. May I sit?"

"HOW ARE YOU HERE?" Mal repeated.

She took a deep breath. "This is awkward, but, hi there, Malcom Reynolds, Zoe Washburne, Jayne Cobb, Kaywinnit Lee Frye, Simon Tam, River Tam, and Inara Serra. I'm Death. I can be here because I am everywhere, even now."

She _knew their names. _"Death ain't a person," Jayne said, through everyone's compounded shock.

"I'm a person and a force at the same time. I come from a family with seven siblings – Destiny, me, Dream, Destruction (though he's retired, long story), Desire, Despair, and Delirium. We're not actually allowed to be lovers of mortals, but there was this loophole…"

"Once a century, you live," River said with wonder. "Live for a day. Then you die. To know what it's like to die."

"Exactly. And something I'd never done in all these millennia of incarnating is get drunk. I thought I'd try that. And then, of course, it seemed like a good idea to try something else I'd never done as a mortal."

"_Go-se," _Mal whispered. He had a horrible premonition of where this was going.

"When I died, I found there was life inside me, and that it was not scheduled to die. So, um, Mal, I thought you deserved to know…"

Jayne's face was a contorted mess. "_Zhen de ma? _Mal, you _ruttin' knocked up Death!" _


	2. Chapter 2

"I love _Serenity,_" Death said to the still highly confuddled crew, "but your dining room is a little cramped for you to meet my family. My brother offered to host the gathering because his realm is the one all of you are most familiar with, so hopefully it won't be too uncomfortable."

Inara had recovered her poise by this point, trained to be gracious in all manner of situations. "It would distress us to leave the ship, Madame."

"Our bodies aren't leaving," River said, smiling. "The Sandman comes to carry us away."

Without any sort of transition or preamble, they found themselves sitting at larger, oval table, made of marble. On land. Outdoors. With rich forest in one direction and an immense stone castle like from the history books and fairy tales in the other.

"What the hell?" Jayne asked, craning his neck around.

"Sit down and watch your mouth, Jayne, we needn't fuss our hosts," Mal warned, mindful of the five additional figures on the other side of this rather grand piece of furniture.

"Are we safe, River?" Simon asked, knowing implicitly that here, River was the authority rather than he.

"We're guests of the king," River replied, in a not-entirely comforting way.

"I know this place," Kaylee was squeezing Simon's hand with one of hers but making grasping motions with the other, as if trying to reach something at the edge of her memory.

Death took a seat across from Mal. To Death's right was a tall young-seeming man, pale as she, with hair as white as his clothes. An emerald hung from a silver chain around his neck. He appeared a little stiff, not exactly the sort of person to hug and crack jokes with, but his smile was kind, and Mal felt him to be the most familiar of them all.

There was a bit of a gap between him and the next one. She was a short, fat, supremely ugly and totally naked woman with a sharply hooked ring around her finger. Despite this, her cold gray eyes were calm and without hate.

The one sibling sitting directly next to her (and eyeing Inara with a look far more predatory and entitled than that _pigu _Wing, making Mal wish he was in a position to give another punch, damn the consequences) was smoking a cigarette that had the unlikely scent of peaches rather than tar. At first Mal thought they were a man, but a shift in the light cast a feminine curve over their face – but where were the breasts? Were those breasts? The rich clothes did not answer the question. The uncomfortable thing was that it didn't seem to _matter. _Not that he had anything against double-sliders; Inara serviced ladies as well as gentlemen, if not as often. What troubled him was that nothing in this one's oddness or arrogance made them anything less than utterly, undyingly, heartbreakingly beautiful.

On one pointy end of this mighty elliptical structure, was a very tall monk-type fella with a hood over the top half of his face, making Mal wonder how he could see. He was carrying a big, heavy, leather-bound book that upon a second glance was chained to his wrist. It was open and he was reading it. Mal got the sense that this was pretty much his full-time job.

On their side was Inara across from that platter of _piaoliang _who Mal now saw had sharp golden eyes, Zoe across from that wretched naked woman, Jayne across from an empty chair, Mal across from Death, Kaylee and Simon – on account of their closeness – both facing the man in white, and River sitting diagonally from the last.

The youngest of them looked to be about River's age, perhaps a year or two less, and she was grinning at River like they shared secrets between them. She had ridiculously rainbowed hair in dozens of colors that kept shifting like they were alive. One of her eyes was green and the other blue. Her lips were bright red, like in a child's drawing. Her clothes were a mess of rags and netting that barely kept her modest, with gloves that didn't cover her fingers and were studded haphazardly besides.

"Nice to see you, stream. I mean pond. I mean ocean. I mean cry-me-a…"

"River," the Albatross said soothingly, patting the girl's hand. "Thank you for being my friend when I needed you."

"When?" Simon asked.

"At the Academy. My only friend. She's like me. She was Delight. Now she is Delirium. She got trapped inside her hurting world but her big brother and their friends saved her and she's still Delirium but she's better now."

Even Jayne's heart must have melted a little at that frank summary.

Delirium blushed and made sparkling bubbles appear in midair. "That was, was, my job, y'know? You're _mine, _but sometimes you're my brother's-who-isn't-here and sometimes you belong to my biggest-brother-who's-going-to-get-mad-if-I-don't-stop-talking so I'm being quiet now."

"You have not done wrong in breaking the silence," said the Monkish One. "We will make further introductions."

"You don't need to bother with _your _names, though," said the beauty with a cutting edge to the velvety voice. "We've known them as long as you have."

"Don't be like that, Desire. Dream-" Death indicated the man in white, "created this space because Destiny (he's the one with the book) said that what happened to me accidentally is important to the future of the multiverse, and we needed to talk it out, and that Destiny's garden is a bit much for first-timers. Also Dream is going to be very important in the process."

"I am Despair," the naked woman said quietly.

"You poor thing!" Kaylee cried involuntarily. Then she put her hand over her mouth. "Made us sound simple, no doubt. Begging your pardon."

"That is the kindest thing any mortal has said to me in five thousand years," Despair replied with softness, though it was against her nature to actually smile.

Inara shook her head to clear her thoughts. "They spoke of you in House Madrasa, Desire. They said you were neither and both man and woman and emotion and god."

"I've watched your career with interest, pretty one," Desire replied, taking another drag on its cigarette. "You have provided me with some amusement."

"Don't talk to her like that," Mal growled.

Zoe kicked him under the table. _"Mal."_

Destiny overrode any potential fracas by saying, "This quality exhibited in Mal has been mingled with essences in Death to fill a void in reality. There has always been loyalty, faith, the foolhardy but noble concept of honor before reason. The Endless have sired mortal children, but never have they carried and birthed an immortal. It will be a daughter. And her name will be Devotion."

The silence that followed was momentous and dark. Mal never realized he could tumble into something even bigger than bringing down the Alliance, never knew he'd find a 'verse outside the 'Verse that apparently had sackloads of many different 'verses inside the bigger one. He had never felt tinier than when these giants spoke to him as an equal.

Dream whistled and a white raven came to sit on his shoulder. He spoke with hesitant warmth that proved his former aloofness to be actual shyness. "Miss Kaylee often dreams of strawberries. Is there other refreshment I may offer you?"

"Apples, please," River said.

"Would you go fetch Taramis please, Nandi?"

Both Mal and Inara stared at the thoroughly preened and healthy bird.

"Yes, sir," came the crackled but very obviously femalevoice. The bird caught Mal's eye and winked. "Still looking pretty good, Malcolm Reynolds. _Ni hao, meimei._"

…………………………………………………………………………………..

Note: I had to invent a slang term for Mal POV to use. Hooray for double-sliders! (Not that there's anything wrong with strictly sly or strictly…"usual"? - or all the other possible 'Verse-terms for all the different orientations).

Also, it literally did not occur to me how strong the parallel between River and Delirium's tales are, particularly in _Delirium: Going Inside _from _Endless Nights. _Mal's relationship with Death is never going to be more than accidental babydaddy turning into friendship, but I see some possibilities with those two.

For those of you who haven't read what I think is the finest one-shot in the _Sandman _verse, Delirium has pretty much totally shattered and she's so lost inside her own realm that no one can go rescue her and emerge with their minds intact. Dream (who had to give up his ordinary life as Daniel to come be her brother – see how that's a little like Simon?), Barnabas, and Matthew send out a message to the crazy people of an unnamed city because Delirium cannot hurt them further. Four of the rescuers are adult psychotics of some variety, but the one teenage girl has been catatonic for months. While they founder through Delirium's realm she reaches out and says, "It's okay. I hurt too. Hold my hand."

Delirium becomes somewhat healed, if still not Delight, the four adults return to their ways of life, and the catatonic girl wakes up. The art, by the way, is trippy, glorious, and heartrendingly beautiful.


End file.
